Marijuana startups raked in $200 million from investors in 2015

A start-up founder pitches potential investors at the Twitter building.(Photo By David Downs)

The red-hot legal pot sector raked in an estimated $200 million in investment in 2015, Inc.comreports this March.

Inc.com picked up on a report from a venture capital researcher at CB Insights who found $215.2 million invested across 98 deals in 2015, up from 63 deals worth $97.1 million in 2014.

Yes, cannabis is federally illegal, but 35 states have medical marijuana laws, and four states as well as Washington DC have adult-use laws. The legal industry could have a $44 billion economic impact by 2020, other researchers report.

Both the SEC and cannabis investing experts are warning folks to steer clear of penny stocks due to lax reporting and rampant hucksterism.

Motherboard used an analysis from Openfolio — an investing social network.

“Many of these stocks have been overvalued and we always caution investors about investing in overvalued securities,” OTC Markets director of corporate communications Saskia Sidenfaden wrote Motherboard in an email. “That said, if we discover a stock is subject to stock promotion without adequate information, we do place a Caveat Emptor [Latin for “let the buyer beware”], skull-and-crossbones, label on the security that appears on our website and is distributed on market data feeds reaching investors, broker-dealers, and clearing firms.”

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